We have shared with you just a few months, in which we have tried to inform you as best as possible on environmental issues. We are thrilled to welcome 2010, in which we hope to improve our blog and help you be as informed as possible. We certainly hope we’ll help you lead a greener life.
This year has brought us much joy, and excellent news, but also some challenges and disappointments such as Copenhagen. Let’s hope 2010 will bring along a broadening of conscience for all of us, and new and innovative ways for increasing sustainability, and helping us take care of our only home; the World.
Hoping you have a great 2010, all the best, and cheers!
If you like nature and movies, this is a great opportunity for you. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has launched a video competition “Our Planet, our stuff, our choice”. You can participate with your video until February 16th.
The video has to address one of the following topics: reducing, reusing, recycling, composting, and consuming. It has to be between 30 and 60 seconds long. There are four categories of prizes. The first one consists of $2500. The second one, $1500. The third prize, $1000. And lastly if two students (aged 15 to 18) participate together, they can win $500 each.
EPA calls for competitors’ help to create videos that will make people get involved, communicate information, and lead to action.
When addressing the topics, consider the following information. Reducing and reusing has to do with reducing consumption, designing products that last longer, reducing and repairing products. Why is reducing and recycling important? Trash that goes to landfills is a great contaminant. When you reduce, not only are you generating less trash, but by reducing your consumption of new products, you avoid unnecessary production, and avoidable energy usage.
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We can’t complain about lack of space for growing plants, since we’ve seen here on Sustentator that they can be grown on living, or green, roofs and in hydroponic systems for the home. Now we’ll present green murals, which are also called living walls.
A living mural is a wall, even just one, which is part of a building or functions as a median and which is completely or partially covered with vegetation in the same way that living roofs are. This could include the façade of a house or building, or sometimes an interior wall. That’s why these walls are sometimes called vertical gardens.
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A small ISP (Internet Service Provider) and hosting company in Illinois has become the first data center operator to be powered entirely by wind energy. The company is called Other World Computing (OWC) and is located in Woodstock, Illinois. It has installed a wind turbine on its premises, that supplies all of its energy needs.
The turbine is 131 foot high and it can generate 500 kilowatts of power. Per year, it generates 1.2 million kW, more than twice what OWC needs. The surplus power will be sold to the local power provider. When the wind blows stronger, the wind turbine can produce in one week more energy than what OWC needs for a whole month. On the other hand, the company knows that the wind may not always blow; in those cases, energy is taken from the local provider.
When wind power is transformed into energy, the energy goes to the company’s metering device; OWC uses the amount it needs, and the rest is sold to the local provider.
Further, the company’s facility was rated LEED Platinum. LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is a rating system that provides a set of standards for environmental construction. Also, thanks to its different green initiatives, OWC was ranked N 9 on a list of green-IT vendors, by computerworld, in 2008.
The turbine was designed to function and produce energy at low speeds, given that the area’s average wind speed is of 10-15 mph. Even at 9 mph, the turbine can generate power.
The whole installation of the turbine cost $1.25 million, an investment that OWC expects to recover within 10-14 years. This period can be reduced considering the rising energy costs.
VIA: DataCenterKnowledge
Hoping that you will have a jolly green Christmas, we want to give you a few suggestions for helping you make your holidays greener.
GIFTS
In case you still haven’t bought all the presents you needed to buy, we suggest that you choose giving services instead of things. For example, you can offer tickets to a show, or a dinner some place nice, instead of buying stuff.
The wrapping of the gifts you make is also very important. Try to minimize the amount of paper you use for wrapping. There are options, such as old newspapers, magazines, pieces of cloth, shoe boxes. By using your creativity, you will avoid tonnes of paper from being sent to landfills. On the other hand, this year you can save all the wrapping paper accumulated on Christmas, and re-use next year! It’s not cheap, it’s green!
TRAVEL
If you are going somewhere, try to use public transportation. If you go by car, try to share your ride, so each of your footprints will be diminished. Also, check out our driving tips in Green Suggestions. Mainly, the speed you drive at is a key factor determining your fuel consumption.
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Let’s be honest, Copenhagen was not what we expected. What we had in mind was that an international treaty in which countries would accept to be legally bound to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions would be achieved. The main purpose of the summit was the establishment of a strong and binding agreement, and this was not achieved.
BUT, we Sustentators believe that in order to progress we need to find the positive side of things. While no binding agreement was reached, there were other accomplishments, possibly minor, but not irrelevant.
To start with, more than 110 world leaders gathered with a common goal: to discuss how to address climate change. We believe this is really remarkable. The Presidents of the USA, China, Germany, France and Brazil, among others, were in Copenhagen. That means the world and political leaders are giving increasing importance to global warming.
Secondly, the conference was covered by thousands of media reporting during the two weeks of Copenhagen on the progress and challenges that occurred there. This breadth in media coverage must have reached many people around the world, which were in contact with environmental problems. This is a virtuous circle, because if more people are aware, the social pressure increases for politicians, and this helps legitimate stronger actions.
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The atmosphere is made up of numerous gases. The ones in larger quantities are nitrogen (78%) and oxygen (21%). This leaves around only 1% for other gases such as carbon dioxide (the famous CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O), which are known as “greenhouse gases.” These greenhouse gases are responsible for retaining the heat, allowing our planet to have a habitable temperature. Without these gases, Earth’s temperature would be so low that no type of animal and vegetable life would be possible. This is worth pointing out because these gases are not harmful per se. They become dangerous (if we understand climate change as something bad) to our planet when we alter their natural proportion in the atmosphere.
To understand global warming, we need to know the activities that generate these gases to be able to diminish their emissions.
Carbon dioxide (CO2): This is the most widely known greenhouse gas. It is estimated that this gas is responsible for 50% to 60% of the greenhouse effect caused by men. In 2004, 77% of the total emissions of greenhouse gases were of this gas. This is something possible taking into account that 80% of our energy comes from fossil fuels (petrol, carbon and natural gas) that release this gas through combustion. We have already discussed here in SUSTENTATOR that among all fossil fuels, natural gas is the greenest.
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Some of you may think “thank God they do”, some others don’t believe in it yourselves. Anyhow, a survey by Ipsos McClatchy discovered that 70% of North Americans believe that temperature has been going up in the past century. And 61% of them believe that this warming is due mostly to human activity, such as burning fossil fuels.
Nowadays, people who do not believe in climate change are often dubbed “climate skeptics” by the media. I am not sure of how pleasant it must be to be called that way. There is plenty of evidence and studies that show that the climate is in fact changing. But if we expect to spread the news, accusing others of being skeptics might not be the best way to do this.
One of the keys to solving this unprecedented crisis I think we are in is actually to get people to realize what’s going on and to care enough to do something about it. If climate change is happening (which I think it is), we need to be as open-minded as possible, to be ready to show our arguments, and to listen to others’ arguments.
Political solutions such as emissions trading, or carbon taxes, or carbon budget, are necessary. But without social involvement they will definitely not be even close to solving the problem. If we are to evolve to a system that can co-exist with nature, as many people as possible, from George Bush to my neighbor, need to at least consider the possibility that global warming is happening.
That’s why I think this Ipsos poll is encouraging; it shows that a large part of US citizens actually believe in climate change. That’s many minds focused on the same problem, potentially capable of creating new solutions, and working together to build the necessary changes we all need to make. Besides, global warming is being generated by us, by society, and society is made up of each and every one of us. So if you and I decide to do something about it, if we start to reduce our environmental impact, already society’s impact on the whole is decreasing. You can start… now.
VIA: Treehugger
The UN-backed scheme to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) has made significant progress during the climate talks in Copenhagen. The system aims to pay poorer nations for saving or replanting their forests. Taking into account that deforestation is responsible for nearly a fifth of man-emitted greenhouse gases this could prove a valuable contribution towards curbing the pace of global warming.
Tony La Vina, the chair of REDD negotiations, said that the scheme is “more or less agreed text except in a few places.”
REDD was adopted two years ago during UN climate talks in Bali, Indonesia. If fully adopted it could mark important progress regarding climate change issues, particularly because it could see billions of dollars flowing to developing countries. By paying forest communities and purchasing carbon offsets, richer nations would encourage greater participation, and interest, by some developing countries on these issues. This might also go a long way to resolving disputes between developed and developing nations on the shape of overall global climate change schemes.
Financing has not yet been decided but a US official recently said the US had pledged $1 billion as part of a $3.5 billion scheme of initial financing toward curbing deforestation.
Roman Czebiniak of Greenpeace warned, however, that REDD might become a loophole allowing big corporations to continue to pollute as long as they set up a small forestry project in developing countries. This is why broader targets on reducing deforestation must go hand in hand with schemes such as these. It is not enough to protect certain areas; we also need more sustainable forestry solutions and for that governments need to establish gradual reductions regarding deforestation levels.
La Vina did comment, unfortunately, that the dispute on REDD was unlikely to be resolved in Copenhagen but he thought it might be settled during 2010. This seems to be the case with many of the agreements that were expected during the COP15 summit but it should not be a reason to lose hope. Change rarely takes place overnight but the important thing is that change happens. Hopefully 2010 will, indeed, mark the end of the Copenhagen summit negotiations’ finishing touches. If it does not then I will be worried.
Source: REUTERS
The Coastal Roots Program seeks to protect coastal areas and wetlands in Louisiana; by educating students and making them part of the solution. Educators from the program have created lessons in which kids are taught environmental contents. After a study, they have found that the kids who attend these lessons grow in environmental awareness and improve their performance in science subjects.
Thus, we are increasingly aware of the benefits of environmental education, which should be much more widespread.
The study analyzed the impact of eight practical lessons on kids’ school performance, and it found out that kids score 11 points higher on the first year. On the second year of attending environmental lessons, kids’ scores were 25 points higher.
During the lessons, students were taught things like plants needs, processes, and benefits. They had to take care of plants, and learn to grow them. To evaluate the impact of lessons, students had to answer a number of questions before and after they attended the program.
Later on, when they are already a bit stronger, plants are incorporated in restoration projects of the Louisiana Sea Grant College Program, on which Coastal Roots is dependent.
Since 2000, more than 3500 students have planted more than 29,000 student-grown seedlings, in Louisiana.
VIA: Treehugger
In warm, beautiful Honolulu, air conditioning is almost a must-have. But to power it, incredible amounts of energy are used, most of that energy generated from polluting sources, and 90% of it imported. But thanks to a new project, air-conditioning will become a much greener deal.
The plan is to pump cold water from the ocean depths, make it circulate into buildings’ existing A/C systems, and finally send it back to the sea. By doing so, Hawaii’s dependence on imported fossil fuels will be reduced, and Hawaiians will save a great deal in power bills, which are the most expensive ones in the US.
How will it work? Basically, plumbing will be extended almost five miles offshore to capture 45-degree water from 1,800 feet deep. This water will be then sent to a cooling station, and then distributed to A/C systems, and then sent back to the sea, released at a shallower depth. The project will reach the downtown core of Honolulu.
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